Introduction

American children are the most tested in the world.¹ Under pressure from everyone from local stakeholders to the federal government to prove what their students have learned, teachers inevitably play a starring role in the testing process. The mere mentioning of testing makes teachers and students cringe.

But not all testing has to make you cringe. When testing is approached as a way to gain insight into learners’ thinking in order to best plan for their learning as individuals, it can be rewarding and pain free.

Ongoing assessment

I prefer to refer to testing that happens at regular intervals and for the purpose of a fuller teacher and student understanding as assessment. Assessment should be ongoing and may be informal as well as formal.

Teachers assess their students informally all of the time. For example, you might:

ask a student to explain why a certain assignment was easier the second time she did it
have a student retell a story in his own words
converse with a student about ways a narrative piece of writing might go

These informal assessments feel more authentic than a written test — so much so that neither the teacher or the student may think of them as assessment! They might instead describe such communication as learning, thinking, or sharing ideas. I contend that anything that provides a teacher with insight into learning, thinking, and sharing ideas is indeed assessment.

What is noteworthy in this definition of assessment is that conversation is present and foremost in gaining understanding. The conversation is two-way, and neither the teacher nor the student is in possession of one particular right answer. A co-construction is occurring. This co-construction, this building of understanding on the part of the teacher and the student is at the heart of assessment.²

Other kinds of assessment have more rules. Teachers must give benchmark exams, collect evidence mandated by their districts, and administer end of grade tests. These are times when teachers feel they are testing and students feel they are being tested.

Some of these more structured assessments can become more informal and less daunting by becoming dialogic — that is, centered around conversation. Two examples of assessments that engage teachers and students in conversation are running records and miscue analysis.

About this edition

Part one of this edition explains how to use a running record, a tool that helps teachers to identify patterns in student reading behaviors. These patterns allow a teacher to see the strategies a student uses to make meaning of individual words and texts as a whole. The teacher can then devise strategies to help that student grow as a reader. Running records are typically used in lower grades, especially with emerging readers.

Part two deals with miscue analysis, an assessment that helps a teacher identify the cueing systems used by a reader — the strategies a reader uses to make sense of a text. Instead of focusing on errors, miscue analysis focuses on what the student is doing right, so that he or she can learn to build on existing reading strategies. Miscue analysis is typically used with older students.

For both running records and miscue analysis, this edition combines audio recordings of children reading with sample assessments and analysis to show you how to manage and learn from the process. There are also practice assessments and blank assessment forms.

Finally, in part three, you’ll read fictional profiles of readers who were helped by teachers who used running records and miscue analysis. Every learner and every teacher-student interaction is unique, but these profiles should provide you with examples on which to base your own use of ongoing reading assessments.